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At the legislative hearing Tuesday, Dec. 6, to determine how much public money should be spent on a new Vikings Stadium, there were many different groups protesting: Some groups wanted to protect the Legacy Amendment from being tapped. Some objected to a sales tax, and some simply objected to poor people paying for a “Rich Man’s Stadium.”
Photo by Kim DeFranco
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Can we afford a new Vikings stadium?
BY ED FELIEN
At the legislative hearing Tuesday, Dec. 6, Mayor Rybak again proposed putting up $300 million of Minneapolis taxpayers’ money for the construction of a new Vikings stadium. But, as with last week’s hearing, Zygi Wilf was not impressed. He was so unimpressed he wasn’t even there, again. He sent in Bagley, his vice president in charge of dealing with idiots.
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61B election set for Jan. 10
BY ED FELIEN
Susan Allen easily won the DFL Primary election held on Tuesday, Dec. 6, with 82% of the vote. A Native American and lawyer, she will face Nathan Blumenshine in the general election on Tuesday, Jan. 10. Blumenshine gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot as a candidate for the Respect Party.
Southside Pride asked the candidates three questions:
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An open letter to MN Attorney General Lori Swanson
BY ED FELIEN
Dear Attorney General Lori Swanson,
If it was possible for the State of Minnesota to sue the tobacco industry for the damage they knowingly perpetrated on Minnesota citizens and recover monies to compensate for those damages, then why is it not possible to sue the five major oil companies and Koch Brothers Refinery for the health problems and deaths that have resulted from the transmission and burning of fossil fuels when they have known for years the damage they were doing to the people of Minnesota and to the climate and planet?
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A warning to the good citizens of our fair city
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN
Are you a law-abiding citizen? Do you obey the laws, the ones you know about, because you care about the common good? Do you believe there’s a reason for our laws and you follow them because it makes your own life and the lives of others safer and more pleasant and so on? Do you care about “humanity”? That’s how I am. Then again, there are certain laws I don’t understand and which I obey just so I don’t get hassled.
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Looking for love in very old places, Part Two
BY ED FELIEN AND CAROL HOGARD
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Carol standing next to a "Cycladic Goddess" statue
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We landed in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, and spent a couple of days wandering through museums, looking at sculptures and figurines, but we were anxious to see something real, something on site, in situ (as archeologists say), that had been part of the life of the pre-Nuraghic or Ozieri culture.
We went to a small town on the southeast coast, Villasimius, where there was supposed to be a good example of a domus de janas. Domus de janas was what locals called these little structures. The term means fairy houses. There is something whimsical about them. The one we found by the sea in Villasimius looked like a stone igloo, with a narrow passageway leading to a bigger room. Of course, if you’re looking for inferences to the great mother goddess culture, then the structure could also remind you of the female reproductive anatomy, with a vaginal canal leading to a large womb, and the womb would have been the final resting place for the woman to be buried. There were two large flat stones guarding the entrance that could have been placed in front to keep out small animals while the body decomposed. The structure was quite small, but four thousand years ago people were quite a bit smaller.
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Books for Winter
BY ED FELIEN
 .I confess to a magnificent obsession. I’ve been reading “Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution” and I can’t put it down. It’s taken up all my spare time. I don’t finish the newspaper. Who cares about current events when the tragedies unfolding in the 19th century seem so compelling?
Michael Moore, in a recent televised appearance, said, “At one point Marx only had Engels,” when talking about how small the movement for social change was at that time. But Moore was wrong.
Before Engels, Marx had Jenny.
Jenny Marx was born into German nobility. Her father befriended the young Marx and told him about his visions of utopian socialism.
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The manufactured crisis at home and abroad
By Ed Felien
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Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee
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According to the Nov. 14 New York Times, “Italy must repay or refinance almost 200 billion euros, about $276 billion, worth of maturing bonds by April 2012.” The prospect of Italy’s default on paying off those bonds drove interest rates as high as 7.4%. If rates continue at that level, Italy would be unable to make interest payments on their debt and, like Greece, would have to default.
In response to this crisis Berlusconi resigned and a banker was chosen to lead an interim government that is expected to make drastic cuts in social welfare programs. According to the Dec. 5 Times, “Mario Monti, Italy’s technocratic prime minister, has announced a $32 billion package aimed at showing the markets that Italy is serious about managing its debt, and will balance its budget by 2013. Among other things, he called for reintroducing an unpopular property tax, raising the retirement age, hiking the value-added tax and cutting payments to regional governments, which could then be forced to lay off workers.”
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Don’t just salute veterans, rally with them
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
 Here’s a surprise that the power elites really hate: Many members of the 1% are joining the “We are the 99%” protest movement.
I don’t mean that hedge fund billionaires are suddenly in the streets to show solidarity with millions of Americans who’re fed up with the systemic inequality and corruption infesting our economic and political systems. No, no—those swells aren’t about to dirty their Guccis with any street action. Rather, I’m talking about another, extra-special 1% of our society—the soldiers who’ve been the “boots on the ground” in Washington’s misguided and bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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December
Announcements
Cooperative Energy Futures
This group was formed in 2009 to help communities save energy and explore options for local clean energy sources that would empower community members to take more control of their energy use and costs. The goal is to obtain the highest possible energy savings at the lowest possible cost.
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